Ed DeHoog

John Ashley is a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years in the medical device industry.  John started his career developing diagnostic and electrophysiology heart catheters for Abbott Labs and Medtronic.  He was then recruited as the fifth employee of Oratec Interventions where he developed the Spine Catheter for thermal modulation of the intervertebral disc to treat low back pain.  As Oratec grew to 150 employees and $50M/yr in revenue, John was promoted to Director of R&D and was responsible for 22 engineers, scientists, and technicians and managed the development and commercialization of over 30 arthroscopic and spine products.  After a successful IPO, Oratec was acquired by Smith and Nephew for $260M.  John has worked for more than 10 other medical device start-ups including Fox Hollow Technologies (VP of R&D/IPO/Acquired by EV3 $780M), Primaeva Medical (VP of R&D/Acquired by Syneron), CoAlign Interventions (EVP of Operations and R&D/Acquired by Styrker Spine), ReValve Med (CEO), ANPA Medical (CEO), and Sapphire Medial (Co-founder) where along with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Gary Fanton, he developed the Piton knotless adjustable suture anchor that was acquired by Tornier.  In total these start-ups have returned over $1.25B to investors.  John consulted for Smith and Nephew and Stryker Spine post acquisition as well as for Sutter Hill Ventures, Spinal Kinetics (Acquired by OrthoFix), Baxano (merged with Trans1), and Benvenue Medical.  John is currently the CEO of DurVena (a spinout from Mass General Hospital working on a bypass graft strengthening therapy), ResonanceDx (a spinout of Emory and Georgia Tech working on a SARS-CoVid-2 easy to use and rapid diagnostic test), and Entrepreneur in Residence at Hunniwell Lake Ventures.    He continues to serve as a strategic advisor to ROM Technologies, Rehab2Fit Technologies, several start-ups through MIT’s Venture Mentoring program, the UCSF Surgical Innovations Group, and is a member of the industrial advisory board to the Biomedical Department at the University of the Pacific.  John enjoys not only the challenge of developing new technologies to address unmet clinical needs, but also structuring the entity, corporate processes, and culture to create a highly effective and capital efficient enterprise.  

John received his BS and MS in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.